Kortney Davenport was scared of messing up when she started the experiment.
Davenport, a freshman in Elizabeth Cox's honors biology class at East Forsyth High School, stepped onto a bus yesterday morning and got a taste of what forensic scientists do every day.
"I learned the process it takes and how specific you have to be whenever you work in a crime-investigation lab and how important it is to be very careful with what you're working with, with the DNA and everything," Davenport said. "I basically have a better understanding of DNA and how complex it really is."
Davenport, 15, was one of 48 students at East Forsyth who experimented with DNA fingerprinting, as part of UNC Chapel Hill's traveling science lab called the Destiny bus. Students boarded the bus 24 at a time.
For 90 minutes, Cox's biology classes worked through a Gel electrophoresis lab, testing samples of DNA to find out which fictional suspect committed a made-up crime.
"That's a really expensive lab for genetics and a lot of schools, public schools, don't have the money to buy the equipment to do that," Cox said. "It's just giving them access to something that we just don't have the funding to buy, the type of equipment … and hopefully, they'll have fun."
The Destiny Traveling Science Learning Program is a science-education outreach initiative of Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at UNC Chapel Hill. Its two custom-built, 40-foot buses, Destiny and Discovery, take advanced science and technology equipment to students who otherwise might not see high-tech experiments or what a science career can offer, officials said.
The program, which was created in 2000, offers 15 activities for students. Teachers learn to incorporate the activities into classroom lessons at workshops. Cox attended a workshop on genetics and DNA in October and requested that the bus come to East Forsyth.
Eric Brown, the operations manager of the Destiny bus, has been traveling with the program for nine years.
"I always hear some kid say, ask their teacher, ‘Why can't we do this all the time?' so they really enjoy it, working with all the equipment that scientists actually use," Brown said. "We need to get the kids interested in science and math because that's going to be their future."
Michael Lynn, a sophomore, said that the lab experiment showed him how cautious scientists have to be with DNA fingerprinting.
"Honestly, I'm not really a big science person, never been," Lynn said. "It kind of opened my eyes, like I said. I'm not much of a science person so it's not normally something I'm interested in, but today kind of changed my mind."
■ Lisa Boone-Wood can be reached at 727-7232 or at lboone-wood@wsjournal.com.
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